Knowledge and Decisions

This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America’s most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom.

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

In this devastating critique of the mindset behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years, Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes, but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and more.

The Thomas Sowell Reader

These selections from the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of half a century cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational, and political issues. The sources range from Dr. Sowell’s letters, books, newspaper columns, and articles in both scholarly journals and popular magazines. The topics range from latetalking children to tax cuts for the rich, baseball, race, war, the role of judges, medical care, and the rhetoric of politicians.

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One: Second Edition

Applied Economics is an accessible guide to how our economic decisions develop. It explains the application of economics to major world problems, including housing, medical care, discrimination, and the economic development of nations. The book is based on an international view of economics, includes examples from around the world, and shows how certain incentives and constraints produce similar outcomes among disparate peoples and cultures.

Marxism: Philosophy and Economics

Marxism is a term that many people freely use, but few seem to grasp its implications. Sowell's book is the antidote to this problem. He writes in a fluid and easy-to-follow manner, leading the listener through the Marxian scheme of ideas. Along the way, he shatters some existing interpretations of Marx-interpretations that have developed through repetition rather than through scholarship.

Basic Economics, Fifth Edition: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

In this fifth edition of Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell revises and updates his popular book on commonsense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through a basic understanding of the fundamental economic principles and how they explain our lives. Drawing on lively examples from around the world and from centuries of history, Sowell explains basic economic principles for the general public in plain English.

A Personal Odyssey

Here is the gritty, powerful story of Thomas Sowell's life-long education in the school of hard knocks, a journey that took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a career as a controversial writer, teacher, and economist in government and private industry. It is also the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal odyssey took place.

Intellectuals and Race

Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense - one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. The book explores the incentives, the visions, and the rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular racial or ethnic groups but for societies as a whole.

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

This explosive new audiobook challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans and Nazis, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as historic interpreters of American life.

Dismantling America

These wide-ranging essays - on many individual political, economic, cultural, and legal issues - have as a recurring, underlying theme the decline of the values and institutions that have sustained and advanced American society for more than two centuries. This decline has been more than erosion. It has, in many cases, been a deliberate dismantling of American values and institutions by people convinced that their superior wisdom and virtue must override both the traditions of the country and the will of the people.

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Economic Facts and Fallacies is designed for people who want to understand economic issues without getting bogged down in economic jargon, graphs, or political rhetoric. Writing in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues, including many that are widely disseminated in the media and by politicians.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

Hayek gives the main arguments for the free-market case and presents his manifesto on the "errors of socialism." Hayek argues that socialism has, from its origins, been mistaken on factual, and even on logical, grounds and that its repeated failures in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed were the direct outcome of these errors. He labels as the "fatal conceit" the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

In this book, which the author calls a "culmination of 30 years of work in the history of ideas", Sowell attempts to explain the ideological difference between liberals and conservatives as a disagreement over the moral potential inherent in nature. Those who see that potential as limited prefer to constrain governmental authority, he argues. They feel that reform is difficult and often dangerous, and put their faith in family, custom, law, and traditional institutions.

Migrations and Cultures: A World View

Most commentators look at the issue of immigration from the viewpoint of immediate politics. In doing so, they focus on only a piece of the issue and lose touch with the larger picture. Now Thomas Sowell offers a sweeping historical and global look at a large number of migrations over a long period of time. Migrations and Cultures shows the persistence of cultural traits in particular racial and ethnic groups.

Marie says:"Stunning overview of migration history over time throughout the world."

Conquests and Cultures: An International History

This book is the culmination of fifteen years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over the centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations.

Intellectuals and Society

This is a study of how intellectuals as a class affect modern societies by shaping the climate of opinion in which official policies develop, on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace. You will hear a withering and clear-eyed critique about (but not for) intellectuals that explores their impact on public opinion, policy, and society at large.

Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays

Sociologist-economist Sowell, a noted conservative, offers opinions on social and foreign policy, law, education, and race, criticizing the trend of American politics since Reagan and reserving his sharpest criticism for special-interest groups.

Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

Published in 1922 during those dark and dreary years of socialism’s near-complete triumph, Socialism stunned the socialist world. Mises has given us a profoundly important treatise that assaults socialism in all its guises, a work that discusses every major aspect of socialism and leaves no stone unturned. A few of the numerous topics discussed include the success of socialist ideas; life under socialism: art and literature, science and journalism; economic calculation under socialism; the ideal of equality; and Marx’s theory of monopolies.

Race and Culture: A World View

In his book Race and Culture, Sowell asks the question: “What is it that allows certain groups to get ahead?” and the answer will undoubtedly create debates for years to come. The thesis of Race and Culture is that productive skills are the key to understanding the economic advancement of particular racial or ethnic groups, as well as countries and civilizations - and that the spread of those skills, whether through migration or conquest, explains much of the advancement of the human race.

Basic Economics, Fourth Edition: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

The fourth edition of Basic Economics is both expanded and updated. A new chapter on the history of economics itself has been added, and the implications of that history examined. Among other additions throughout the book, a new section on the special role of corporations in the economy has been added to the chapter on government and big business.

Adios, America

Ann Coulter is back, more fearless than ever. In Adios, America she touches the third rail in American politics, attacking the immigration issue head-on and flying in the face of La Raza, the Democrats, a media determined to cover up immigrants' crimes, churches that get paid by the government for their "charity," and greedy Republican businessmen and campaign consultants - all of whom are profiting handsomely from mass immigration that's tearing the country apart.

The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective

Using an international framework, Sowell analyzes how much a racial group’s economic fate is determined by the surrounding society and how much by internal patterns that follow that same group around the world.

Martin P. Rodgers says:"Very interesting material, with not very good audi"

Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?

Thomas Sowell takes a tough, factual look at whether the civil rights movement has lived up to its hopes or its rhetoric. In the decades since the historic Supreme Court decision on desegregation, who has gained and who has lost? Which of the assumptions behind the civil rights revolution have stood the test of time, and which have proven to be mistaken or even catastrophic to those who were supposed to be helped?

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

Human Action is the most important book on political economy you will ever own. It was (and remains) the most comprehensive, systematic, forthright, and powerful defense of the economics of liberty ever written. This is the Scholar's Edition: accept no substitute. You will treasure this volume. The Scholar's Edition is the original, unaltered treatise (originally published in 1949) that shaped a generation of Austrians and made possible the intellectual movement that is leading the global charge for free markets.

The Road to Serfdom

Originally published in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has profoundly influenced many of the world's great leaders, from Orwell and Churchill in the mid-'40s, to Reagan and Thatcher in the '80s. The book offers persuasive warnings against the dangers of central planning, along with what Orwell described as "an eloquent defense of laissez-faire capitalism".

Publisher's Summary

This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America’s most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom. This is because actual knowledge is being replaced by assumptions based on an abstract and elitist social vision of what ought to be.

Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a landmark work and selected for this prize “because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government.” In announcing the award, the center acclaimed that the “contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [this] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant.”

Thomas Sowell is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been published in both academic journals and such popular media as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune and writes a syndicated column for newspapers across the country.

What the Critics Say

“This is a brilliant book. Sowell illuminates how every society operates. In the process he also shows how the performance of our own society can be improved.” (Milton Friedman)

“In a wholly original manner [Sowell] succeeds in translating abstract and theoretical argument into a highly concrete and realistic discussion of the central problems of contemporary economic policy.” (F. A. Hayek)

IMO, among Thomas Sowell's small library of outstanding contributions, Knowledge and Decisions easily ranks as the finest. This is the 1996 edition, which simply adds a substantial preface to the original 1980 edition as far as I can tell.

The first half of the book is a brilliant, seminal, and timeless treatment of the nature of knowledge, how it is obtained, validated, transmitted, coordinated and acted upon. Sowell analyzes social, economic, and political structures and institutions in terms of their decision making processes and incentives as opposed to their intentions and hoped for results, and explains in a truly fundamental way how complex societies work.

The second half of the book examines specific trends and issues in the social, political, economic, and legal arenas. At the time of its publication, this was the current events section. Of course, the world has changed in many profound (and superficial) ways since 1980, so this section today is more historical in nature.

But since one of the great strengths of Sowell's work is its basis in and exposition of global and world historical experiences and perspectives, section two retains its interest and force, and is an effective reminder of the failures of centralized decision making structures that were viscerally evident a generation ago (especially via communism), but whose implications are largely forgotten today. As the saying goes, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

All in all, this is a great book that stands the test of time quite easily.

I generally like sowell's work even if it they all tend to move a bit slow for me as they are often geared to a very general reader. The main problem with this book is one of degree: that it spoon feeds. For anyone who is accustomed to thinking systematically, this book breaks down the bites way too small and hence becomes extra slow moving and by extension dull. I gave up less than one-third of the way through-knowing i couldn't take that many more hours. i will say that i enjoyed the introduction (written 15 years after the original book) more than what followed.

again, he is a good writer, its an interesting topic, his stories and explanations are very clear, but he really belabors every little point in this book.an abridged audio book would NOT help, but i do feel he could have written this in half the text

Thomas Sowell as good as ever presents the issues of contamporary society in a clear and not too biased way. We all need to be grateful that a member of a minority has the courage to speak things, which said by a member of any majority would be considered 'politically incorrect'. Of course, mr. Sowell believes in a free market much more than it would be optimal, but is would be really hard to argue with his hypothesies, I couldn't do it:)

If you could give Knowledge and Decisions a new subtitle, what would it be?

How institutions work mainly to benefit themselves rather than to fill their goals

This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in understanding why governments, politicians, and 'intellectuals' behave as they do. The breadth and depth of the rigorous analysis provided is breathtaking.

The most important and foundational of Sowell's book. The first part is superb, while the second is boring at times. I enjoyed second part too because it is 30 years old and gives contemporary account, which is different than reading history books now.

Would you recommend Knowledge and Decisions to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes. This book discusses knowledge and decisions in a fair amount of depth. It definitely requires multiple listenings to fully appreciate and understand the concepts being presented. Overall, I think it is a well argued book very much for an academic crowd or those who want to understand more about decision-making processes.

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